This invention relates generally to systems providing call routing, and more particularly to caller-selected access to multiple telephone numbers and/or devices associated with a subscriber via a single telephone number.
Today, telephone subscribers often use multiple telephone numbers for both personal and business purposes. For example, many people today have different telephone numbers for their residence, office, facsimile machine, cellular telephone, pager, and voicemail. With so many different telephone numbers, it is no wonder that people often have to call several different numbers before reaching their desired party.
Moreover, even if the called party is physically at the location called, the particular telephone number may be busy due to extended voice or data connections. In some cases, the calling party may wish to contact the subscriber on a different line; for example, the caller may merely wish to send a facsimile or electronic mail to the subscriber. The calling party, however, may not know or may have forgotten or misplaced the number to the desired line. For these and other reasons, it is desirable to have a service where the caller can ring alternate destinations.
One such prior art service that attempts to provide easier access to a subscriber is known as call forwarding. Standard call forwarding increases communication mobility and flexibility by enabling a subscriber to forward telephone calls to any secondary destination that can be accessed from the central office via the Publicly Switched Telephone Network (xe2x80x9cPSTNxe2x80x9d). Such destinations include different twisted pair lines, cellular lines, pagers, and other media. Another feature of some call-forwarding services permits the subscriber to remotely forward calls from the caller""s primary destination to an alternate destination. With this feature, the subscriber can forward incoming calls while located at a remote location. The subscriber need not be present at the primary destination to initiate the forwarding process.
Call forwarding, however, is an example of a service that permits an incoming call to ring to a secondary destination only at the subscriber""s direction. If the subscriber fails to initiate the routing of incoming calls to a secondary destination, the calling party may have no further options. In addition, although call forwarding can link together multiple destinations, the calling party must wait for each secondary destination to ring and be forwarded. Moreover, calls directed initially to a telephone or pager are generally not forwarded to devices such as facsimile machines or modems.
Therefore, there is a need for a method of quickly routing a call to one of a plurality of lines associated with a subscriber based upon a calling party""s input. In addition, there is a need for user-selectable routing of calls to devices such as facsimile machines and modems.
The present invention meets the needs described above by providing a method and system for routing a call dialed to a particular telephone number to an alternate destination associated with the subscriber of that telephone number. The caller may select routing the call to any of the lines or devices made available to the caller by the subscriber. Such devices may include landline and cellular telephones, paging devices, facsimile machines, modems, and other similar devices.
Briefly described, a subscriber may register for a universal number service to obtain a universal number that can be linked to alternate destinations associated with the subscriber. For example, the subscriber may wish to give calling parties access to multiple residential and business telephone numbers without having to provide each telephone number to each calling party. Thus, the subscriber may combine access to these and other select destinations via a single universal number. A calling party may then dial the universal number and select from the alternate destinations. associated with the subscriber of the service.
More particularly described, a calling party dials a universal number, which may comprise a public feature code accompanied by a standard seven or ten digit directory number. The controlling service control point (xe2x80x9cSCPxe2x80x9d) determines whether the subscriber associated with the dialed directory number has signed up for the universal number service. If so, the SCP also determines what alternate destinations are associated with the universal number. The SCP then instructs the calling party to select one of the alternate destinations associated with the universal number. For example, the list of alternate destinations may comprise pagers, cellular telephones, facsimile machines, secondary business or residential telephones, modems, and the like. In response to receiving the calling party""s input, the SCP obtains the routing information associated with the chosen destination and instructs the controlling service switching point (xe2x80x9cSSPxe2x80x9d) to route the call to the selected destination.
These and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention may be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the disclosed embodiments and by reference to the appended drawings and claims.